Racial, Ethnic, and Socioeconomic Disparities in Burn Care Access: A Single-Center Retrospective Study

While racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in burn care have been identified in the literature, there is a paucity of research into specific underlying causes of these disparities. Here, we sought to characterize whether time to initial burn consult might contribute to racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic differences in burn care outcomes. We performed a retrospective review of all patients evaluated by the burn surgery service at a single regional ABA-verified burn center between June 2020 and April 2022. Patients without data for the time of onset of burn injury were excluded. Time to burn consult was defined as the time from onset of burn injury to the time of first burn consult. Three hundred and sixty-five patients met the inclusion criteria. Average age was 33.3 years, and 65.8% of patients were male. Average time to burn consult for all patients was 17 hours and 07 minutes. There were no significant differences in this variable among our cohort when stratified by race, ethnicity, or insurance status. Rates of surgical management (Chi-squared P = 0.05) and length of stay (ANOVA P < 0.0001) significantly differed by insurance status, but not among racial or ethnic groups. Medicare patients had the highest rates of surgical intervention and longer hospital stays; patients without insurance had the lowest rates of surgical intervention and shorter hospital stays. These results indicate that time from burn onset to burn consult is unlikely to contribute meaningfully to racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in burn care. Further studies are needed to better understand other aspects of burn care that may contribute to the noted disparities.